About Publications

Publications from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine provide objective and straightforward advice to decision makers and the public. This site includes Health and Medicine Division (HMD) publications released after 1998.A complete list of HMD’s publications from its establishment in 1970 to the present is available as a PDF.

More than 168 million children are affected by child labor worldwide, with a predominance of child labor occurring in sub-Saharan Africa and Asia International Labor Organization estimated in 2012 that 6 million children and more than 15 million adults were victims of forced labor. While strides have been made in understanding the problems of child labor and forced labor, as well as in approaches to reduce the global burden of both issues, additional research could help fill the remaining gaps in knowledge. To these ends, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine held a workshop, at the request of the U.S. Department of Labor’s (DOL’s) Bureau of International Affairs (ILAB) Office of Child Labor, Forced Labor, and Human Trafficking (OCFT) to illuminate the current gaps in knowledge within the research fields of child labor and forced labor.

In an average day, there are approximately 4,000 violent deaths across the globe. In 1 week, there are 26,000, and in 1 month, 120,000. Workshop speaker James Mercy of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) highlighted that these figures are directly influenced by the means and methods selected as tools of violence and their degree of lethality; simply put, means matter.

On August 11–12, 2014, the Institute of Medicine’s (IOM’s) Forum on Global Violence Prevention, in a collaborative partnership with the Uganda National Academy of Sciences (UNAS), convened a workshop focused on informing and creating synergies within a diverse community of researchers, health workers, and decision makers committed to promoting IPV-prevention efforts that are innovative, evidence-based, and crosscutting. This collaborative workshop also fulfills the forum’s mandate, which in part requires it to engage in multisectoral, multidirectional dialogue that explores crosscutting approaches to violence prevention.

Data suggests that one in 10 older adults in the United States experience physical, psychological, and sexual abuse, neglect, or financial exploitation. Elder abuse violates older adults’ fundamental rights to be safe and free from violence. With the global population of adults older than 60 expected to double to 1.2 billion by 2025, the number of older adults will exceed the number of children for the first time in history. Despite the growing magnitude of elder abuse, it has been an underappreciated public health problem. The IOM Forum on Global Violence Prevention held a workshop on elder abuse and its prevention to shed light on this underappreciated and often overlooked form of violence.

Evidence shows that violence is not inevitable, but rather can be prevented through approaches that have demonstrated measureable effects in the reduction of violence. Successful and promising violence prevention programs exist that target different types of violence, including self-directed, interpersonal, and collective violence; however, the existing evidence base does not necessarily inform practice or policy making. Furthermore, gaps in the evidence base exist, particularly in the context of interventions in low- and middle-income countries. The IOM Forum on Global Violence Prevention held a workshop to explore the value and application of the evidence for violence prevention across the lifespan and around the world.

In exploring the occurrence of violence, researchers have recognized the tendency for violent acts to cluster, to spread from place to place, and to mutate from one type to another – similar to the infectious disease model, in which an agent or vector initiates a specific biological pathway leading to symptoms of disease and infectivity. On April 30-May 1, 2012, the IOM held a workshop that focused on the epidemiology of the contagion, possible processes and mechanisms by which violence is transmitted, how contextual factors mitigate or exacerbate the issue, and ways in which the contagion of violence might be interrupted.

As we learn more about what works to reduce violence, the challenge facing those who work in the field is how to use all of this new information to rapidly deploy or enhance new programs. At the same time, new communications technologies and distribution channels have altered traditional means of communications, and have made community-based efforts to prevent violence possible by making information readily available. How can these new technologies be successfully applied to the field of violence prevention? The IOM’s Forum on Global Violence Prevention held a workshop to explore the intersection of violence prevention and information and communications technology.

Measuring the social and economic costs of violence can be difficult, and most estimates only consider direct economic effects, such as productivity loss or the use of health care services. Communities and societies feel the effects of violence through loss of social cohesion, financial divestment, and the increased burden on the health care and justice systems. Initial estimates show that early violence prevention intervention has economic benefits. The IOM Forum on Global Violence Prevention held a workshop to examine the successes and challenges of calculating direct and indirect costs of violence, as well as the potential cost-effectiveness of intervention.

Across the world, violence against women and children poses a high burden on global health. Women and children are particularly susceptible to violence because they often have fewer rights or lack legal protection. Over the last decade, researchers have gathered data on the growing magnitude of this violence, but many research gaps still remain. January 27-28, 2011, the Forum on Global Violence Prevention held its first workshop to explore the prevention of violence against women and children. The workshop opened the discussion on violence-prevention strategies, as well as ways to prevent the spread of violence from one generation to the next.